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Is Bing Making a Move on Google?

Guest post by: Lonny Dunn

Article Overview: Bing has recently moved into the "Local" market, as did Twitter. How does Bing Stack up to Google? How is the process different? Who wins the Local battle? Why the consumer, because these locality searches get's any business owner into the Search Engine Optimization game for FREE!

Is Bing Making a Move on Google?

Is Bing Making a Move on Google Local?

First gOOgle, then Yahoo!, then Bing, now Twitter and Facebook. These search engines are realizing what many of us have known, or surmised all along. All business, just like all politics and fast food is LOCAL.

At 3:34 AM Thursday, I received a rather unusual email from Bing explaining that I should examine their "Local" features, which I did. Here's some observations from the front lines:

1. When you type in bing.com/local it takes you to their local center, and at the bottom is a Business Listing Link. This is free. I recommend any business or individual sign up for Locality Listings with Yahoo, Bing and Google immediately, it's free advertising, and get's you moving on the Search Engines, and builds out your online imprint.

2. Once you've typed in your information ( elapsed time 28 seconds and only 5 lines to fill out ) it takes you to another page, which explains this:

Bing Local lets users find businesses near them, or near where they want to go. Because listings are returned in search results, businesses don't have to search for new customers-the customers have already found them.

3. Google provides a rather nice video when explaining their "Locality" pitch at youtube.com/googleplaces which as you can see, they allow to be broadcast over their YouTube brand.

4. Yahoo's is a bit more extensive to fill out, but worth it nonetheless. I cannot over explain the importance of getting signed up for these, even if you are an individual. If you haven't realized it yet, than ignore at your own peril: These freebies are not just to place your location on a map. These companies are search engines, and the purpose of you listing with them is to get your name recognized on the Internet.

4.a. Back to Bing.....If you haven't opened a Live account, you will be prompted to do so. I didn't like this feature about Bing. Google does not mandate this part of the process. Does gOOgle want to know about everybody and all our movements? Maybe. Well not maybe, of course gOOgle wants to know everything about us .....But gOOgle didn't make me fill out an account for the free listing. So that part is easier on gOOgle.

5. However, it's not all that bad. Bing includes a newsletter so you can take advantage of their locality features, gOOgle does not. I signed up for it, I receive a thousand emails a day already, one more will not break the bank.

6. All three allow you to fill out the information without any real verification process. You can list your parking arrangements if any, your type of payment: Visa, PayPal, MC, you can list your specialties, and your Categories, for want of a better term.

7. Listing your business in 5 fields is a tremendous advantage to the business owner, since they can pick and choose what categories they want their business in. I like to go after the low hanging fruit anyway, and see what the competition is doing. If there is only one other professional in the region who does Pizza Delivery and I choose to pick "Transportation Engineer" as my category, guess what? If that other TransEngineer doesn't pick his phone up or is unavailable....Then I get the sale! Use this feature to your advantage, and put some thought into which categories you want to be in.

8. The "categories" section of Bing is burdensome, but again, worth the trouble. I found other local search engines much easier to deal with through the years, but Bing can't help itself, they did it the way nerds and geeks have done it for some time, with drop down menus and supposedly ease of use in mind. I found it not so easy.

9. Not particularly important, but I liked the map feature that is displayed next. It is not a StreetView, but an aerial shot of your location, as you would see it from flying overhead. At least you can see what your roof looks like.

10. Where Bing really separates itself from other Locality features is the actual letter they send to your address. Now granted, they still have no way of verifying all the details put on their so called free "Listing" but they are making an effort to make sure spammers and so forth are not getting listed on their search engine. However, I find the process completely archaic and it seems as if it is intended to intimidate.

In conclusion: Bing is making a play. MSFT for years, the worlds largest company could probably do it better than gOOgle, but so far, gOOgle has Bing beat in the ease of use category, and tenure. gOOgle has simply made it easier to get listed, easier to fill out the forms, and easier to get out of there and onto the busy work we all need to do.

Twitter has added "Locality" as one of its features, you might have noticed that when you are in your account, you see this option available. There are obviously two sides to any fence. Internet Marketers always think they have to create a Global Brand, I even do it on some profiles. But seriously, end users want to identify with the person, who they are, what they are like, what defines them as a person. Locality selection is one way of personalizing your international brand, and separating you from online creations or as fictitious.

Lastly, I stress a couple of points: Getting listed on Search Engines is not going to set your business phone ringing, it is not apanacea.Setting up local listings, is just one smartmarketing task we all need to perform.I offer a wealth of free tips that anyone can do today to get listed on Local Search Engines, build content, and spruce up your website, at WorldsBestTips on Twitter, and my blog at SmartPeopleBlog. Rarely do I recommend spending money on Search Engine Marketing, and other so called specialists, who basically are taking free ideas and charging for them.

Lonny Dunn

Author of the Worlds Best Series

Editor SmartPeopleBlog

Author Viral Marketing for Attorneys

Personal and Professional Development Coach

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Article Tags: Advertising, Content, Free Advertising, Google, Local, Search Engine, Small Business



Related Forum Posts
SEO Marketing tips for Promoting your Business on Bing - Bing is gaining popularity and within a short period of time this search engine has surpassed Yahoo and almost giving tough competition to Google. There are more users logging into Bing every single day. Some of the cool things about Bing is that it is QUICK and has a better USER INTERFACE. However, there is a significant different in the way Google and Bing rank websites. If you are planning to optimize your website for Bing then you need to consider these following tips. 1. Domain Age – Bing gives preference to your domain’s age. Google on the other also gives preference to domains which are old. 2.On-Page Optimization/Off-Page Optimization – Google gives more preference to Off-Page optimization rather than on-page optimization. Bing on the other hand gives more preference to On-Page SEO optimization rather than Off-page optimization 3.Text Density – Bing gives preference to keyword density of your content. If you are targeting a particular keyword and your keyword density for that keyword is abysmally low then you wont be able to rank too high on Bing. 4.TITLE is more important – Although Google does gives preference to keywords in TITLE, Bing entirely focuses on TITLE of any given webpage to decide whether it should be ranking at page 1 or Page 8. Therefore make sure to add your important keywords in the TITLE. Also you should abstain from artificial keyword stuffing. Several keywords are semantically considered as same. Take for example, Search engine optimization company, and SEO marketing company are semantically connected with each other. If you are ranking high for one combination, you will also rank for other combination.
Re: Search Engine choices and SEO - to my experience if you optimize for Google Bing eventually catches up and Yahoo uses Bing Algorithm so that works as well. It's just Bing and Yahoo are a bit slower of discovering new content and also are more likely to get spammed because Google's web spam team is actively trying to figure out ways to improve search quality.
Google:Yahoo:Bing - Hello All, I would like to know from your experience. How much "potential" traffic do you get from Google as compared to Yahoo/Bing. I have personally observed that traffic ratio is as below: Google:Yahoo:Bing 70:25:5 Do let me know your inputs.
Re: Search Engine choices and SEO - Yes we should optimize our site for Yahoo and Bing as well. I target all Google, Bing and Yahoo for search engine promotions because all of them draw a decent number of visitors for my site.
Re: Search Engine choices and SEO - Good point, GT. I find Bing very useful for checking how my pages are "really" doing on the search engines - or at least to compare with my results on Google. When it comes to searching for info though, I use Google most of the time.


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